SPLURGE-WORTHY DINING
The Modern
In a delayed celebration of our anniversary, we dined at The Modern, the restaurant next to the Museum of Modern Art. With a table by the window, we looked out at MoMA’s sculpture garden and December’s bare trees. Lunch was a three-course prix fixe. Everything was beautifully plated and delicious. I opted for the cold lobster salad with citrus and burrata followed by sea bass with some agnolotti and then a cheese course.
The Chief Penguin had hamachi over basil to start and then roast chicken on a sweet potato cake followed an elegant lime parfait. Service was impeccable, and we enjoyed chatting with our young waitress. This is a wonderful venue for special occasions!
MATISSE AND MORE
Hanging Out at MoMA
The other morning, we walked down to W. 53rd Street and spent a most pleasant hour exploring several exhibits. We headed first to the 3rd floor for a look at Matisse’s Cut-Outs: A Celebration, works from late in his career. These paper cutouts are amazing. His paper “stained glass” window, Christmas Eve (Nuit de Noel) has vibrant colors, but the glass version he had crafted is most impressive and so luminous.
Also of note are the figures he did for his swimming pool. Rather than add a swimming pool to his home, he created blue leggy figures and adhered them to a band of paper around the perimeter of his dining room. The overall effect was feeling like being in the water.
Leaving Matisse behind, we looked at some works from the permanent collection from around the world. I was struck by the muted intensity of Mark Rothko’s No. 16 (Red, Brown, and Black) and by the mysterious figures underlying Blue Composition, c.1966-68, by Ethiopian artist Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian. There appears to be both a horse and the snout of an alligator or crocodile.
And No Shade but His Shade by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi is a compelling work all in browns including a man’s head with a bird perched on his scalp.
LIVE DRAMA
Left on Tenth (James Earl Jones Theatre)
I read Delia Ephron’s memoir, Left on Tenth, when it came out and was pleased when I saw that she was writing a script and working with Good Wife TV star Julianna Margulies. The Chief Penguin and I went to the play and enjoyed it immensely. The cast is small, just four people; Margulies and Peter Gallagher as the leads, two others who play cameo parts, and two dogs. It is a story of newfound love, but it’s also about serious illness, specifically leukemia. (A variety of that same disease took the life of Delia’s sister Nora.)
While one might expect this to be a depressing drama, it is not. Yes, there are sad and tense moments, but there is joy and lightness. The staging consists of a simple set, minor costume changes, and creative lighting and projection to change the mood or the season. Margulies carries the work, projecting a full range of emotions, while Peter Francis James in brief roles as a friend, a gruff doctor, and a waiter adds a bit of humor and dance.
Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.) Header photo of trees for sale along 3rd Avenue.
